The selection of articles in this Issue relates to the theme of the 2014 conference of the Society for Reformation Studies held in Cambridge, namely ‘Gender and Sexuality in the Reformation'. Until the last quarter of the twentieth century such a topic (which now focusses chiefly on the female status, female gender-identity, and female aspiration) was confined mostly to: better provision for female literacy (enabling equal access to the Bible as spiritually enfranchised, female sons of God); enhancement of the status of marriage (despite desacramentalization) along with theoretical sexual equality within marriage; and then clerical marriage enabling clergy to have sex legitimately and in good conscience, as well as some women to have respectable conjugal relationships with ‘men of God' and often manage their (practical) affairs. With the modern advances in women's and feminist studies, the scope and depth of the topic has widened and deepened in both empirical and speculative ways. On the whole, the following sample of studies reflect some current approaches to women's voices and predicaments during the long Reformation era in the ecclesiastical, theological, socio-political, and marital spheres.
Sara Apetrei's study addresses the traditional (Protestant) gendering of dogmatic theology and mysticism. The former was a healthy male business, the latter unhealthily female — especially when combined with charismatic prophecy and enthusiasm. Typically, Protestant spokesmen in Britain considered manifestations of female mysticism and accompanying phenomena as ‘popish'. Enlightenment developments only tightened the screws further, it is shown. Cartesianism, for example, reconfirmed the notion that reason, rationality, and scholasticism were intrinsically male preserves, whereas outward emotion, spiritualist enthusiasm, and irrationality were female ones. Mouthpieces of the latter were no longer dismissed by Protestants of all hues simply as Romanist, but as ‘superstitious' and even deranged or pathological, and certainly not ‘reasonable'. Interestingly, however, Apetrei shows that there were also male Protestant defenders of female (Catholic) mystics — in north-east Scotland, for example.
It has also been commonplace that in the old Reformed, Anglican, and puritan traditions, the crucifix and associated Passion spirituality were generally shunned. This axiom has been queried in recent times — at least as regards the seventeenth century. Lucy Busfield's piece on the Passion poetry of the English poetess, Aemilia Lanyer (of Venetian descent through her father) is designed to clean the lens in two ways. First, one did not need to be a Roman Catholic to pursue a meditative spirituality on the corporal suffering of Christ. William Perkins is cited. Second, as a corollary: to encourage modern readers to back away somewhat from perceiving Lanyer's mystical and Passion verse as essentialistically feminine and even feminist, even if still ‘female.' It is of note that Lanyer suggested an interesting corrective to the idea of female responsibility through Eve for the Fall of Man by pointing to the killing of Christ (deicide), a greater crime, one perpetrated by men only.
Iris Fleβenkämper's topic is the female voice in divorce proceedings which were predominantly instigated by women (particularly on the grounds of physical abuse and cruelty) — a legal recourse which was now available in many Protestant regions from the early days of the Reformation. Her archive-based research studies court cases in the German Reformed principality of Lippe, noting that while adultery and desertion were straightforward grounds for divorce, citing domestic violence had less prospect for success for a variety of reasons. These were: lack of proof as well as the fact that in most institutions including the family, all power as well as socially acceptable, assertive violence was in male hands. She makes the telling observation that while received religion is usually understood as condoning this situation (and so qualifying for black marks), female divorce plaintiffs in abuse cases appealed to theology and Christian ethics to strengthen their case against what they cited as unchristian, godless and sinful behaviour. Thereby they hoped to influence the churchmen on the consistorial courts (and in presbyteries), if the wrath of God was not to be provoked in the impious community.
Considering that most historians' awareness of Anna Trapnel in seventeenth-century England is confined to her public activity as a prophetess, visionary, and Fifth Monarchist, Whitney Gamble's review of Trapnel's overall religious and theological evolution is a helpful contribution to the understanding of this preacher. Trapnel's journey, it is pointed out, begins in the English antinomian controversy, the bridge that enabled her to cross over into radical and subjectivist religion well outside Reformation orthodoxies. And since that controversy in England [echoing the ones in early Lutheran circles as well as contemporary Massachusetts] — with its disputes about the law-gospel relationship (or lack of it) and Christian freedom — has been under-researched, Gamble points out that without reference to it, a proper appreciation of Trapnel and her theological milieu at a critical stage in her development is not possible.
Kaspar von Greyerz ushers in a strong sense of historical realism to the activities of women in early Reformation environments in parts of Switzerland. He offers a double cameo. First, a critique of a play written by the notable Bernese dramatist and artist, Niklaus Manuel, on the subject of a monk selling indulgences being captured, semi-tortured and interrogated by a rural gang of seven women, two men and a beggar hostile to the traditional Church. Various ways of interpreting the play (which remained under wraps) and its industrial language are discussed. One is that it is just a literary fancy designed, with eschatological undertones, to fuel polemical opposition to the old Church and its corrupt, unevangelical ways. The other is that while it is indeed dramatic popular art employed to commend the Reformation movement, it also echoes the reality of rural agitation along with direct female involvement in socio-religious disturbances, now gradually coming more to light. Second, von Greyerz considers reports of mysterious sexual activities of women (with men) among some Anabaptist groups in the St Gall region. The argument here is that such a phenomenon is not to be dismissed as the typical slandering of heterodox dissidents as sexual libertines, familiar since early Christian times. Contemporary court records seem to corroborate something unusual and deviant in this domain among such groups. Analysis suggests discreet experimentation in eucharistic, sacramental sexuality in ‘elect' circles as a means of spiritualizing sexuality and disembodying it [whatever that may mean]. We do not seem to know if the participating women were willing and saw the procedure as liberating in any way.
In examining the notions of brotherhood and sisterhood plus gender language in the German Reformation (including the revolutionary radicals), Kat Hill's approach is largely socio-cultural. Happily she does not restrict her considerations to the ‘early-modern' context, since she links the topic to both medieval and primitive Christian concepts and thus illustrates their evolution and diversifying mutations. In the end then, ideas of brotherhood, sisterhood, kinship and solidarity were used, but in manifestly different senses by people like Luther and Carlstadt, Thomas Müntzer, Katherina Zell, and a variety of not-well-known Anabaptist preachers and missionaries — the consideration of this last group in particular introduces fresh material. There is also mention not only of the practice of ritual, sexual fellowship among an ultra-radical Anabaptist group in Franconia, but also of the capacity for violence among militant revolutionary females — both also noted in Swiss contexts by von Greyerz in his article. As Hill also emphasizes, the function and operation of transcendental and international networks of non-biological, spiritual kin, brotherhood, and sisterhood served as agencies of change and as alternative identity markers in tension with the established orders of things. Thereby, conversion had the potential for subversion.
Mickey Mattox offers a piece connected with his research on the Genesis commentary of Oecolampadius, the Basle reformer. More specifically, it deals with Eve in relation to Adam before and after the Fall. Before, virtue and co-equality prevailed. After, there was hierarchy and the subordination of Eve. Accordingly, Christian marriage is of a dual dimension: equal spiritual partners on a common happy journey to salvation, unequal partners within a secular social institution also sanctioned by God's Word. In the first, the woman as the righteous Eve is no ‘trouble' to [righteous] men; in the second, the fallen Eve is potentially troublesome, and so subject to the husband's authority. If to us, this all seems very traditional and conservative, in the context of the times the views of Oecolampadius and the other reformers were progressive — in respect of clerical marriage and a significant upgrading of the status of marriage from being a spiritually inferior and shabby mode of existence for the lustful majority.